Jude Bellingham: England's Rising Star in World Cup 2026

Jude Bellingham was supposed to be the question mark. Somehow, after a season bending La Liga and the Champions League to his will, there were still murmurs about whether he should even start for England at another major tournament.

North America, they said, had exposed a few cracks. The altitude, the travel, the grind. The competition for that No.10 role was real, too. Morgan Rogers had barged into the conversation. Phil Foden, Cole Palmer and Morgan Gibbs-White were left at home, their absences framed as a warning: nobody’s place is safe, not even a Real Madrid ‘Galactico’.

The pressure landed squarely on Bellingham’s shoulders. He treated it like oxygen.

He opened his World Cup 2026 account in style, dragging England back in front during a 4-2 win over Croatia that set the tone for their campaign. That goal did more than tilt a group game; it silenced a narrative. The man who had already given Euro 2024 its defining “who else” celebration was at it again, demanding the stage and then owning it.

The story didn’t stop there. Against Panama, in a scrappy, stubborn contest, it was Bellingham who broke the deadlock. The kind of game that can drain belief from a fancied side became another platform for his authority. He found a way, as players of his stature tend to do.

Then came Mexico in the last 16, at altitude, at the Azteca, in front of a wall of noise and hostility. This is where reputations can wilt. Bellingham’s grew. A quickfire brace ripped the tie away from the hosts and delivered one of England’s most memorable knockout wins at FIFA’s flagship event. The setting was iconic, the pressure suffocating. He thrived.

At 23, Bellingham already deals in moments that bend matches and tournaments. The comparisons to Paul Gascoigne and Wayne Rooney are not just lazy echoes of nostalgia; they’re rooted in the way he changes the temperature of a game with a single surge, a single finish, a single act of defiance.

Former England defender Des Walker, speaking to GOAL in association with Wiz Slots, sees the same pattern. “He comes to the party, Jude, in the important games, in the important moments. That's what Rooney does, that's what Gazza does, that's what all great players do,” Walker said, placing Bellingham in the lineage of English football’s great big-stage performers.

Walker didn’t stop at the technical or the tactical. He went straight for the physical and mental edge that separates the very good from the almost untouchable. “He is the best athlete, probably in the world, in terms of the amount of running he can do and the power that he has from the first minute to the last minute,” he said. When Bellingham enters the box, Walker insisted, there is only one intention. “He doesn't go in to make up the numbers, he goes in to get the goal.”

That hunger changes the dynamic of Gareth Southgate’s attack. The burden no longer rests solely on Harry Kane. “Jude will, in every game he plays, go to score a goal,” Walker added. With that power, that athleticism, that obsession with winning, Walker has no hesitation in putting him “in that category of the best in the world.”

This isn’t just about ability; it’s about personality. The glare of the World Cup can shrink players. Bellingham seems to grow under it.

Pressed on whether Bellingham actively enjoys being thrust into the brightest spotlight, Walker was unequivocal: “Definitely. He is the main man. He revels in trying to be the main man. I think that's what inspires him. He wants to be the show-off, the big head.”

That could be a problem in the wrong hands. With Bellingham, it’s fuel. “That's all good being the big head and the show-off, but you've got to be big-headed and show-off on the pitch. He does that, and that's his strength,” Walker said. Try to strip that edge away, he warned, and you lose a vital part of the player. “You try to curtail that from him, you're taking away half his game.”

Every dressing room has seen the other type: the big talker who disappears when the opposition gets serious. Walker has played with and against enough of them to know the difference. “There's plenty of players, we've all seen loads of players that are off the park, they've got the biggest mouth in the world, they're cocky, they walk around like they're the best footballers in the world. Come Saturday afternoon, when you're playing the real tough teams, the big teams, sometimes they go missing. Jude doesn't go missing.”

He hasn’t gone missing for England in this latest pursuit of global glory. If six decades of hurt are to be ripped from the nation’s psyche this summer, Bellingham will be at the centre of it, not lurking on the edges.

Kane, the record goalscorer and captain, still anchors the side. His goals, his presence, his calm remain vital. But the driving force, the one cut from the same volatile, brilliant cloth as Rooney and Gascoigne, is the midfielder from Birmingham who refuses to shrink, refuses to doubt, and refuses to accept anything less than the biggest stage and the loudest noise.

England have waited a long time for a player who genuinely craves that burden. Now they must find out just how far his unshakable belief can carry them.